The generally held fear of carbon dioxide these days has been perpetrated primarily through a series of Assessment Reports (AR) released every five or six years since 1990 by the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC). These reports contain alarming evidence of man made global warming and forecasts of devastation by melting polar ice caps, rising seas, extreme weather, droughts. floods, wars, epidemics, and social disintegration that are expected to kill billions of people. The 4th Assessment Report, usually referred to as AR4, was released in 2007 and AR5 was expected in 2013 but it has been delayed and is not expected before 2014. The reason for the delay is likely to be a requirement for scientific rigor imposed on the IPCC by the InterAcademy Council (IAC).

The IAC is an association of national science academies worldwide. Faced with criticism of the science in CAGW (catastrophic man-made global warming) by growing numbers of “skeptics” and a series of embarrassing retractions by the IPCC, the UN ordered an independent review of the the IPCC’s procedures. The review was carried out by the IAC in 2010.

The IAC found serious flaws in the IPCC’s procedures that call to question the credibility of the Assessment Reports. For example, (1) their review process is flawed because authors do not adequately address reviewer comments and genuine controversies, (2) the probabilities of events are reported without sufficient evidence and without providing a basis for how the probability was evaluated, (3) the IPCC communication and selection processes emphasize secrecy rather than transparency, (4) the use of unpublished and non peer reviewed material in the assessment reports is not controlled or made transparent, and (5) a sufficiently wide range of scientific viewpoints is not considered and due consideration is not given to properly documented alternative views.

Based on these findings, the IAC submitted a set of recommendations to the IPCC for future assessment reports. The IPCC responded saying that AR5 will adhere to all IAC guidelines. If it does, it is unlikely that AR5 will generate the kind of fear that the prior reports are known for. My personal feeling is that the IAC recommendations will eviscerate the assessment reports removing the propaganda and leaving only a mundane scientific study without a political agenda and without any ammunition to continue the war against carbon dioxide. The long delay in the publication of AR5 may be rationalized in these terms.

The notion that our carbon dioxide emissions are causing the oceans to warm at an alarming rate making glaciers flow faster into the sea (Staying afloat in a sinking world, Bangkok Post, November 24, 2010) is logically and scientifically flawed in many ways. I would like to cite only one of them and it has to do with the Argo Project. It was launched with much fanfare about six years ago. Thousands of robotized floats were installed in oceans around the globe to measure “just how fast the ocean is warming”. By their own reckoning, these measurements provide the most accurate and comprehensive sea temperature data available to them. Yet, mysteriously, the hype went out of the Argo Project almost as soon as it was implemented. Not only that, the Argo data are apparently being shunned by climate scientists who prefer the old measuring devices whose inadequacy was apparently the reason that they had sought funding for Argo. NASA’s JPL, the keepers of the Argo data, admitted that it is because there are no trends in the temperature or salinity data from the Argo floats. Had the data showed the kind of warming they had hoped to find, the media would have been inundated with that information. The fundamental bias in climate science is that data that do not support its presumptions are not considered valid.

During 2005 and 2006 the global warming press was abuzz with news about the Argo project – a global effort by climate scientists to cover the earth with thousands of robotized buoys to measure sea temperature. The new devices would aid global warming scientists to “gain new information on the heat trapped in the oceans” and “really track how the ocean is warming” (Sea robots aid climate research, ABC Online, abc.net.au, November 16, 2006).

The initial deployment of the measuring stations was completed in 2007 and more than 3 years have now elapsed but we have not heard from the climate scientists about the new information they have found about how the oceans are trapping heat and warming. The line has gone dead. Could it be that they did not find what they had spent all the money and effort to find? It is clear from the language that the effort was not an unbiased study to discover whether the oceans were warming but only to confirm that it was warming and to hand skeptics a slam dunk but instead of silencing skeptics with the new data, climate scientists appear to have forgotten about the Argo Project and are now pushing land temperatures.

The so called “climate change vulnerability index”, that is likely causing great economic harm to countries like Bangladesh and India by implying that they pose higher risk to investors, is based on the proposition that “there is growing evidence that climate change is increasing the intensity and frequency” of weather related natural disasters. In fact there is no such evidence. This idea was included in the IPCC’s 2007 assessment report based on a peer reviewed research paper but that paper having been shown to be flawed, the IPCC has since made a full retraction of this claim (UN wrongly linked global warming to natural disasters, The Sunday Times, January 24, 2010). However, this orphaned idea has taken on a life of its own and remains in the media and apparently even with the architects of the “climate change vulnerability index”. The perpetrators of this falsehood are likely the real vulnerable parties having exposed themselves to lawsuits by countries suffering economic harm from their flawed prophecies of doom.

It is reported that there are 6.8 billion humans living on our planet but that it is endowed with natural resources and ecosystems that can support only 4.5 billion and that the pressure on the ecosystem thus induced will cause a mass extinction of species comparable with the extinction of dinosaurs (UN urges action to save species, Bangkok Post, October 19, 2010). It is the old and completely discredited overpopulation hype of the 1970s (2001: an overpopulation odyssey, Los Angeles Times, October 22, 1974) recycled in the language of global warming as a way of presenting this rubbish as a new science. The new global warming hype is thus exposed as nothing more than the old overpopulation hype. It is a continuation of the movement against the inhabitation of the planet by human beings with carbon dioxide emissions as a proxy for human activity. Ironically, in the same issue of the paper we read that the Europeans are alarmed that phthalates in toys can damage the sexual development of children (The problem with hazardous phthalates, Bangkok Post, October 19, 2010). Those who really believe in the alleged dangers of overpopulation should be comforted by these findings, not alarmed.

1960s: The over-population theory explores the fear that there are too many people on earth and they are breeding too fast. It is predicted that by 1987 human activity will exceed the planet’s ability to sustain us with food, energy, and raw materials. The scenario, explored in the movie “Soilent Green”, is predicted to includes Biblical famine and death, anarchy, and the devolution of human society possibly including cannibalism. Human activity will have destroyed the earth’s ability to sustain human beings.

1970s: The “limits to growth” theory disseminates the fear that society will collapse by the year 2000 because there is a hard upper limit to the amount of fossil fuels, minerals, and other planetary resources that we can consume and therefore a limit to the level of economic growth that is achievable. Continued economic growth will run into this upper limit and cause a complete collapse of civilization as we know it.

1970s: The first ozone depletion scare campaign is waged against the development of the SST high altitude airliner with the allegedly scientific argument that nitric oxide (NOx) in the jet exhaust will deplete ozone in the ozone layer. The campaign is successful and the SST program is canceled. Their success emboldens environmental extremists and the modern version of planetary environmentalism based on fear takes form. Twenty years later the same scientists, alarmed by falling NOx concentration in the lower atmosphere declared that “NOx is the immune system of the atmosphere” because it prevents chlorine from depleting ozone.

1980s: The second ozone depletion scare campaign is waged against refrigerants that contain CFC chemicals saying that human activity was causing an ozone hole over the Antarctic and causing the establishment of the Montreal Protocol and a comprehensive ban on the most efficient and inexpensive refrigerants used worldwide. The ozone depletion science is proven wrong but the media that helped hype the ozone hole scare are silent on the issue. The ozone hole scare quietly disappears from the media.

1990s to present: The global warming scare campaign rises like a Phoenix from the ashes of the failed ozone hole scare campaign with the theory that carbon dioxide from fossil fuels accumulates in the atmosphere, traps heat, and warms up the planet with catastrophic consequences of Biblical proportions.